Children: Do they make people happy?

My girlfriend and I are ready to get married and have children, said Nattavudh Powdthavee in The Psychologist. Our dream is to have one boy and one girl—surely a formula for happiness. But as a social scientist, I can’t ignore the fact that decades of research has consistently found that while a good marriage does enrich people’s lives, the association between child-rearing and happiness is “zero.” After all, “raising children is probably the toughest and the dullest job in the world,” marked by drudgery and constant worry. So what accounts for the “widespread belief in every human culture that children bring happiness?” Blame it on a “focusing illusion”: We tend to focus on the occasional highlights of child-rearing—baby’s first smile, the high school graduation—rather than on the “core process of child care,” such as diaper changing, picking the kids up at school, and nagging them to clean up their messes. For prospective parents like me, in fact, the research findings are “extremely depressing.”

Let’s hope you do have children, said Miriam Stoppard in the London Mirror, so you can stop spouting this “rubbish.” Four children and 11 grandchildren have brought me more “joy, love, reward, satisfaction, and fun” than any “love affair, career high, or financial windfall.” Yes, there are “mind-numbing” tasks, along with “the endless conflict of priorities between being a good mum, a good employee, and a good partner.” But nothing compares to “the pride you feel when they utter their first words” or score a goal or show kindness to other human beings. I’ll never forget breast-feeding my firstborn and realizing that “for this baby, I’d climb mountains, swim oceans, and knock down walls.” Maybe kids aren’t for everyone, but “I wouldn’t feel whole if I hadn’t had children.”

I know exactly what you mean, said Michelle Cottle in The New Republic Online. And yet for the “incomprehensible bliss” children sometimes bring, there is also “grinding anxiety” and a “feeling of immense vulnerability.” You spend a lot of time worrying that something traumatic will happen to them, or that bird flu will turn into a pandemic, or that you and your husband will lose your jobs and the kids will starve. “Once you have kids, you can pretty much erase the word ‘carefree’ from your vocabulary.” So go ahead—take the plunge. It’ll probably make your life more fulfilling, unless your kid “winds up on a clock tower with an automatic weapon.”

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